Following Taylor Swift’s lead, the Clive Davis Institute at New York University has introduced a course on Lana Del Rey, which will start during the fall 2022 semester.
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Taught by author and journalist Kathy Iandoli, the two-credit course, “Topics in Recorded Music: Lana Del Rey,” runs Oct. 20-Dec and will explore Del Rey’s “contributions to 21st century pop stardom, her relationship to feminism, her musical influences,” as well as her connection to social movements, including Black Lives Matter, Me Too and Times Up, and the artists she’s influenced.
“Over the course of eight critically-acclaimed albums, the six-time Grammy nominated artist has introduced a sad core, melancholic, and baroque version of dream pop that in turn helped shift and reinvent the sound (and mood) of mainstream music beyond the 2010s,” reads the course description. “Through her arresting visuals and her thematic attention to mental health and tales of toxic, damaged love, Del Rey provided a new platform for artists of all genders to create ‘anti-pop’ works of substance that could live in a mainstream once categorized as bubblegum.”
Lana Del Rey’s course follows the recent Clive Davis Institute class focused on Taylor Swift, which was launched earlier in 2022 and examined the singer-songwriter’s journey into country and pop stardom and as a music entrepreneur, and how youth and girlhood are exploited within the music industry and media.
In May 2022 Swift also delivered the commencement speech to the NYU Class of 2022 and received an honorary doctorate of fine arts.
Del Rey recently released her eighth album, Blue Banisters, in 2021, which followed Chemtrails over the Country Club, also released earlier that year.
